The Past Wasn’t Dead Yet

The date was on a Life Magazine published May 30, 1949, my birth week. I discovered it in 1990, when Ken Burns’ PBS “The Civil War” narrative left audiences awestruck by its scope and insight. Amid pipe tobacco and Vitalis hair oil ads, the photo array stunned me. Civil War Veterans were still alive 84 years after it ended, as my life began. There were 68 veterans of the 1861–1865 war staring from a page four years after WW2 ended.Even if those 38 Rebel and 30 Union 19th Century soldiers lied about their ages, they still drew breath at mid 20th century.That bloody war was the first ever widely chronicled in the science of photography. The brutality of battles 162 years ago survive in sepia tones. Military tactics hadn’t adjusted to artillery advances. It was an era of horse cavalry, muskets and wool uniforms. Lines of troops marched with fixed bayonets, blasted to pieces by exploding shrapnel canisters and lines of enemy muskets. The rotary Gatling Gun, a predecessor of the Maxim machine gun of WWI, was so poorly designed it became a footnote to military history. Pickett’s Charge ordered by Confederate Gen. Lee at Gettysburg is famous for senseless loss of life. Photographs erased romantic images of battlefield glory. Bloated bodies on Antietam’s recent battlefield stunned passersby in New York store windows. Gettysburg lasted three days, averaging 17,037 casualties each day.

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